Cannoli Ice Cream: Toppings Megabus

If only pistachios were $5. Not that Megabus is even $5 dollars these days. Sorry Boston friends. You are definitely worth the $35 or whatever they charge these days though. Friendships are worth above money. Though there is a certain element of responsiveness and genuine communication that seems to falter despite all the forms of "talking" we seem to have these days.

quality photo right there. the makings of a true food photographer.

Anyways, to break the 4th or whatever wall I seem to avoid by trying to make my posts timeless, its already Friday at midnight, I'm rather sleepy and running on 22% battery-life, so I'll have to make this fast and not-so-cute. Basically, banana loaf lasagnas means left over ricotta. Which means cannoli ice cream. Which means an abundance of toppings. Probably a little too much-pistachio, chocolate chips, and crushed sugar cones. The original recipe called for actual homemade cannoli shells, but I don't have that kind of time, so sugar cones it was. The beauty of ice cream toppings is that you can add or subtract whatever you want without a major recipe make over.



 Unfortunately, I forgot that sugar cones get soggy. While the crunchy was great when the ice cream was freshly churned, it wasn't so awesome on the 3rd day or so. Not sure if homemade cannoli shells would have that same effect, but I'm curious now since that wasn't really a disclaimer in the original recipe. The ice cream itself is absurdly easy since all the richness derives from the ricotta and your typical mixture of milk and cream rather than cooking a custard. I was a bit skeptical about whether it would actually taste like a cannoli both because 1) There was a lack of mascarpone which seems like a necessary staple for most real cannolis, 2) I've only had 2-3 cannolis in my current existing life so can I really recognize cannoli in ice cream form?, and 3) My last few ice creams have been kind of a miss on the full flavor side.

This time around though, it was obvious that the ice cream base was creamy in that cannoli sort of way. I've never been a big fan of chocolate chips in ice cream, but added them in just to try it out. Still don't really like chocolate chips, but loved the ice cream anyways, especially the pistachios and sugar cones in their non-soggy state. Maybe next time I'll try chocolate flakes because chocolate is still delicious. Just not in crunchy rock hard chip form. Gosh, imagine if I used full sized chips and not mini ones. That would have been a disaster.

As a general update, I ended up running to reserve battery power at the beginning of that last paragraph, so I had to grab my charger. I could re-edit this so that you would never know that I was in the midst of a battery crisis, but I like adding an edge of danger to my posts. Sorry that was a bit too hyperbolic even for me.

Recipe from Cooking Classy (yay alliterations!). I used a hand mixer with a whisk to blend the base since my blender was a bit occupied by pesto. I was concerned I would make whipped cream, but mixing with a spoon when it got too foamy seemed to resolve this. The final base was a little grainy from the ricotta, but the final product was still creamy.

Red Bean Ice Cream: Summer Vacays to the Homeland

I want to say that this is the first time I've had red bean ice cream while in the US, but I feel like that isn't true. It's not like red bean is a super absurd flavor these days. Regardless of the accuracy of my memory, red bean ice cream is something I tend to affiliate with hot, dusty, humid summer days in China visiting family. Every 4ish years or so, we go back to China and, if you have any sense of what Chinese family reunions are like, its a big old time. So much food. So much nice dining. So much one uncle insisting over the other to pay. So much fish oil to bring from the US (and chocolate of course). So much cutesy mechanical pencils and stationary to bring back. It's great.

One of the memories I have from these visits is the reasonable, yet possibly absurd amount of ice cream my siblings and I would consume on a daily basis while being shuttled from one monument to the next. Sure there were some normal flavors, like drumsticks and plain vanillas, but there were also some (at first) fascinating flavors that we probably only tried after the insistence of our mother. Some classic flavors include red bean, green bean, and one that we called "green tongue jello," whose actual name still evades me as a semi-adult.

I'm not sure if this ice cream was a strongly red bean flavored as I would have liked. The super DIY-er in me bought red beans rather than just pre-cooked, sweetened red beans--definitely the easier route. In my defense, I was not deliberately trying to be a hipster or snob. I literally did not realize that pre-made red bean paste exists. This is probably also pretty telling of how terrible I am at grocery shopping if I didn't notice the red bean paste sitting a few shelves away from the dry red beans.

Thankfully, making your own red bean paste is not that difficult- and probably even better if you're particularly picking about the texture or sweetness of your paste. My stove is unnecessarily hot at times, so I did accidentally burn some of the beans when the water got dangerously low while "simmering." Its unclear if this is a placebo effect, but I do feel like after a few days, the ice cream has gotten richer in red bean flavor compared to when it was freshly churned. Orrrrr, I just have really really messed up taste buds from all that sugar.
Regardless, it may not be my best ice cream yet, but its definitely one I plan to try making again at some point. And as a side note, happy belated mid-autumn festival! Go eat some mooncakes!
Ice cream and red bean paste recipe from food52.

Lavender Lemon Sugar Cookies: Soap or Space?

I'm very good at impulse buys when it comes to strange, vague-ly fancy food related items. You gotta hand it to etsy for making it so easy to buy the most adorable, hipster, cutesy, nerdy things. I could easily bookmark half the webpage and just cry about all the things I couldn't buy. But this is the first time I've bought any food-item from etsy, but for dried lavender it was necessary. Amazon sells 1/2 lbs - 1lbs bags of dried lavender, which no one could possibly finish in their lifetime unless they were running a bakery or restaurant. And I don't live in France where I can just frolick through fields of lavender all day.

 I initially bought the dried lavender to make lavender ice cream (eventually, when I get my ice cream maker back). Lavender flavored things sound seriously pretentious and may initially give the impression that people have gone made and enjoy the taste of soap. I first had lavender while in Ojai during a high school summer science program where I spent many mildly sleep deprived nights with some of the smartest people programming and trying to learn astronomy. So to me, lavender isn't so much about fancy soap than it is about the weird silly things we did alongside all the astronomy and science, like lavender festivals, getting a stress test from the Church of Scientology, and creating a 3-level headphone split. You get the idea- summer nostalgia and all that jazz.



If you're feeling a bit of trepidation about investing in a full-on lavender recipe, these lavender lemon sugar cookies are a good way to dip your toes in. The lemon comes off as the main flavor in these cookies, while the lavender come in as key supporting characters that make these cookies, well, better than lemon sugar cookies. 

I ultimately copied the recipe for Lemon Sugar Cookies from Two Peas and Their Pod, but made some modifications to incorporate the lavender. I'll reproduce the recipe below, but I still don't have a fancy recipe widget since 90% of my posts I just follow the recipes from other people. 

Dried lavender purchased from LLFarm on etsy. 1 oz. is the smallest quantity I have found online for a reasonable price, and this will still likely last you for several rounds of lavender baking/cooking. Williams Sonoma or one of those fancy food stores also sells a 1/2 oz amount, but its priced much higher than what I saw on etsy.

Lavender Lemon Sugar Cookies
Lemon Sugar Cookies from Two Peas and Their Pod. Reproduced below with * indicating modifications.
Ingredients:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup sugar
1 TBSP dried lavender buds*
1 cup butter

1 egg
1 lemon- zest*
2 TBSP lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup walnuts*
1/2 cup sugar for rolling
1/2 tsp-1 tsp dried lavender buds for rolling*

Steps:
1-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
2-Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Mix and set aside.
3-In a food processor and blend together sugar and lavender until lavender is chopped up. You can add in all the sugar or just some of it depending on how large your food processor is.*
4-In a clean bowl or mixer, beat together butter, lavender, and sugar until smooth and creamy.
5-Add lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and egg and mix till combined. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix till just combined.
7-Set aside dough. Chop up walnuts in food processor or by hand until you have fine pieces. Add to dough, leaving aside 1-2 TBSP if you want to use walnuts in your rolling mixture.*
8-Using a food processor, blend together sugar, lavender, and walnuts to create rolling mixture.*
9-Roll dough into ~1 tsp-1 TBSP balls (your preference for size) and roll into sugar-lavender-walnut mixture before placing on baking sheets, about 1-1/2 inches apart.
10-Bake for 8-10 minutes until slightly brown and edges are set. Remove, let rest on sheets for 2 mins before transferring to cooling rack.

Chai Ice Cream: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

I usually have a hard time picking favorites. Maybe its because I'm a sibling, and the idea of favorites seems mean. Or that I have problems making definite decisions. You see, its that whole parallel universe idea from those sci-fi/fantasy books I read as a child. The minute you make a choice, you close the door to another alternate reality. Amber Spyglass anyone? (hint, Golden Compass, hint, Phillip Pullman)

Anyways, even if I did have the ability to travel through different worlds or realities, this Chai Ice Cream would remain the one constant in my exciting and dangerous little life. My totem if you will (if you're into Inception). It's rare for me to have a favorite, as my parallel world's intro rambling just told you, but I'm pretty confident that Chai Ice Cream is by far my favorite homemade ice cream yet. Yes. Even above pumpkin and apple pie and speculoos ice cream. Maybe it was because I took the extra two hours to boil my own chai-spiced custard base. Which I probably would have consumed on its own without freezing if I didn't love ice cream freaking much.

There are Chai Ice Cream recipes out there that probably entail just soaking chai tea bags in hot water to create a concentrate, but please please please please take the extra 2 hours, 1 hour of driving around to grocery stores, and extra $20 bucks to buy whole fragrant spices if you have the freedom of post-graduate life. Because man, while I hate recipes that call for a million things that I would only use for one recipe, this is so worth it if you're a fan of either ice cream or chai or being happy. Well, scratch the last one. I can't tell you what makes you happy, but just thinking about a bowl of this ice cream and my backyard on a stereotypically lovely Californian day certainly makes me happy.

An ice cream recipe this perfect can only come from my favorite food blog itself--Serious Eats. The comments mentioned adding sugar because it wasn't sweet enough, but ignore them. I did not ignore them and added an extra 1/4 cup, but in the end, the extra sugar was quite unnecessary.